garden. This little closet opens from a larger one, and then by a narrow
flight of stairs leads to a suite of ground-floor chambers, following
one from another, lined with bookcases and looking on the gardens. What
a strange fellow-feeling with the past it gave one to stand staring at
the old books, with their paper backs and old-fashioned covers, at the
gray boards, which were the liveries of literature in those early
days; at the first editions, with their inscriptions in the author's
handwriting, or in Maria's pretty caligraphy. There was the PIRATE in
its original volumes, and Mackintosh's MEMOIRS, and Mrs. Barbauld's
ESSAYS, and Descartes's ESSAYS, that Arthur Hallam liked to read;
Hallam's CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY, and Rogers's POEMS, were there
all inscribed and dedicated. Not less interesting were the piles of
Magazines that had been sent from America. I never knew before how many
Magazines existed even those early days; we took some down at hazard and
read names, dates, and initials. . . . Storied urn and monumental bust
do not bring back the past as do the books which belong to it. Storied
urns are in churches and stone niches, far removed from the lives of
which they speak; books seem a part of our daily life, and are like the
sound of a voice just outside the door. Here they were, as they had
been read by her, stored away by her hands, and still safely preserved,
bringing back the past with, as it were, a cheerful encouraging greeting
to the present. Other relics there are of course, but, as I say, none
which touch one so vividly. There is her silver ink-stand, the little
table her father left her on which she wrote (it had belonged to his
mother before him). There is also a curious trophy--a table which was
sent to her from Edinburgh, ornamented by promiscuous views of Italy,
curiously inappropriate to her genius; but not so the inscription, which
is quoted from Sir Walter Scott's Preface to his Collected Edition, and
which may as well be quoted here: 'WITHOUT BEING SO PRESUMPTUOUS AS TO
HOPE TO EMULATE THE RICH HUMOUR, THE PATHETIC TENDERNESS, AND ADMIRABLE